Good suggestion ballardw. Converting into Column Style in conjunction with the INFORMAT statement does the trick. ... View more

The _LABEL_ variable is only created by PROC TRANSPOSE if there are variable labels in the input data set for a variable listed in the VAR statement. If none of those variables have labels, _LABEL_ is not created and therefore cannot be dropped. Removing _LABEL_ from the DROP= option would get rid of the warning. If, for some reason, you must leave _LABEL_ in the DROP= option, you would get the same effect by adding a LABEL statement in the the PROC TRANSPOSE step, specifying any non-blank label for any variable in your VAR statement. The _LABEL_ column will be created, then dropped. A bit odd, but no harm, no foul. -Warren Repole, SAS ... View more

Jeremy, Double check the column immediately after each of the date values in your input files. Even though you have specified an the INFORMAT statement, the INPUT statement is using List Style input that assumes a delimiter (default is a blank/space) between each value. The informat will be applied only after the characters identifying a value have been determined. If column 24, 33 and/or 43 is not blank, then the INPUT statement is trying to include those characters as part of the date. The messages in the SAS log also might indicate an attempt to read values from additional columns. If this is your problem, you will need to specify the informats in the INPUT statement, converting it into Formatted Style input. The width of 6 for the informat will identify the exact number of characters read for each date. -Warren Repole, SAS ... View more

The main difference between MISSOVER and TRUNCOVER occurs when you have variable length records and are using formatted or column input. TRUNCOVER reads "partial" data that falls at the end of the record, whereas MISSOVER sets the value to missing. An example to further clarify: An INPUT statement requests to read exactly 5 bytes starting at position 18, but a data record is only 20 bytes long. TRUNCOVER will treat bytes 18-20 as valid data. MISSOVER sees that bytes 21 and 22 are not present and considers the field to be invalid. If the record had been 17 bytes long, both TRUNCOVER and MISSOVER would produce a missing value. Variable length records were pretty rare in the early mainframe days of SAS, but they are nearly universal in Windows and Unix-family systems. As a general rule, TRUNCOVER should be used in most modern SAS applications. ... View more

The key reason that the DATA step with %DO runs so slowly is that the %DO loop is generating 18,828 separate CALL SYMPUT statements, all of which need to be compiled before the step is run. My tests indicate that the DATA step required more than 36MB (yes, that's MEGAbytes) of memory to handle that many statements. data _null_; %do i=1 %to 18828; call symput(cats('testvar',&i.),&i.); %end; run; The equivalent DATA step with DO instead of %DO needed to compile only one CALL SYMPUT statement and took less than 300k of memory. ... View more

Multiple values for a single stored process parameter are provided as individual values with a numeric suffix attached to the parameter name. Here's a short code sample that can put the values together in the desired fashion, e.g., enclosed in quotes with comma separators. /* EG generates this %LET statement. */ %LET eqnum=%NRSTR("10-1380"),%NRSTR("10-1428"),%NRSTR("10-1429"); /* SP parameters generate equivalent of these %LET statements */ /* when 2 or more values are supplied. */ %let eqnum1=10-1380; /* First selection */ %let eqnum2=10-1428; /* Second selection */ %let eqnum3=10-1429; /* Third selection */ %let eqnum0=3; /* Selection count */ %let eqnum=10-1380; /* Same as first selection */ /* Always anticipate first selection and number of selections. */ %global eqnum eqnum0; %macro CombineEqNum; /* Assumes SP parameter requires at least one selection. */ /* Additional logic required if zero selections is valid. */ %let eqnum="%superq(eqnum)"; /* Put quotes around first value */ %local i; %if %superq(eqnum0) ne /* If counter is present */ %then %do i=2 %to %superq(eqnum0); /* Append 2nd, 3rd value, etc. */ %let eqnum=&eqnum,"%superq(eqnum&i)"; %end; %mend CombineEqNum; %CombineEqNum There is a more detailed explanation of the multiple value creation in the Stored Process Developer's Guide at http://support.sas.com/rnd/itech/doc9/dev_guide/stprocess/input.html There is a reminder that only the stored process server currently supports multiple values for a parameter. The workspace server only supports one value. ... View more